Howdy Everyone,                                            6-11-95

Second in the series.

I haven't been this tired since I helped my Dad build the house!  But it
is a good tired.  The tired you get when you push all weekend, make tons
of progress and you feel good.  So if I don't sound coherent, you'll know
why.

So far the accomplishments include building a wing jig table, bonding the
ribs to the upper wing skin, and machining some spacers and rod-end
supports.  After spending several hours on the lathe, I've decided I have
to get more professional at this, or it is going to take me all year just
to do the metal work. So I've ordered $250 in quick change tool holders. 
Since so much of the kit's composite work is done for you, it seems like
they went out of their way to make the kit builder do lots of lathe work.
I've been told there is mill work, but since I don't have all the
construction manuals yet, I don't know.  Seems they are big into stainless
steel, which is way over kill for the stress levels not to mention the
extra weight.  Being this is an Italian  kit the instruction are in
English, but the mechanical drawing are in Italian.  The dimensions are in
inches, so you only have to know the Italian for stainless steel, and
aluminum, the rest you can figure out.

Given the number of parts, and the fact that I have the third kit shipped
in the US, they are scoring pretty good so far on the correct parts. 
Missing in action so far include: package of riv-nets (metric of course,
so I don't have 68 spare ones laying around), a 20mm rod that the drawing
says should be 10mm, and don't feel like doing extra lathe work, so I will
just buy the 10mm rod from Cincy.  Can't tell if that is a mistake in the
drawing or in the supplied parts, but from a stress stand point, 10mm is
still over kill.

Other stuff missing; ...I think I forgot to mention that it took us 18
hours just to inventory all this stuff!!!... Seat belt buckles, seat
cushions, relay sockets, coax cable, gas cap flange, plus other stuff I
can't remember.  23 parts out of the 1000 or so isn't too bad for a new
company.  We have gotten some of the missing stuff already, and the other
stuff is in the pipe line from Italy.

So far an air driven die-grinder works pretty well for cutting carbon
composite, but we are still experimenting with different tools and
techniques.  The next big challenge is to level the table up before we
bond the bottom wing skin on.  I got a small laser, but this will take
some futzing around to come up with a way to get things level over 20
feet.

It's amazing how much stuff you can get done when the TV stays off for 3
weeks!!!  I'm getting so much done, I think the VCR will stay unplugged
until next fall!

Until next time.... Jim

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